Live Sound Bootcamp

This question has come up over and over again through the years, and it seems to land in a topic that isn't discussed widely.  How does one move from small clubs, to big clubs, to festivals, to arenas, and sheds to stadiums?  Not just how do you get the gig, but also what changes in your daily workflow, in how you communicate, in who's on the team, and how you manage succeeding in that transition.  Welcome guest Josh Benton as we talk through the process of progression in your career.   One would think this would be a simple episode, but nope, as usual, we go on and on, and this is part two of this two part series.

This question has come up over and over again through the years, and it seems to land in a topic that isn't discussed widely.  How does one move from small clubs, to big clubs, to festivals, to arenas, and sheds to stadiums?  Not just how do you get the gig, but also what changes in your daily workflow, in how you communicate, in who's on the team, and how you manage succeeding in that transition.  Welcome guest Josh Benton as we talk through the process of progression in your career.   One would think this would be a simple episode, but nope, as usual, we go on and on, and this is part one of this two part series.

Remember last episode when we said we would land in the concept of Season 3, answering listener questions, well we screwed that up.  In this episode we answer a question that we had, about how best to go about capturing and mixing orchestral instruments, in classical environments, and also in the context of adding strings to a pop or rock act.  One would think this would be a short and simple episode, but nope, as usual, we go on and on.  This Episode features guest host Aram Piligian.

So finally we fall into the concept of Season 3, answering listener questions.  In this episode we answer a question that digs into dialogue, corporate events, house of worship, expectations, auto mixing, noise reduction, how to make a talking human sound like what the audience expects.  One would think this would be a short and simple episode, but nope, as usual, we go on and on.

Lies and lies, we told you that we would have shorter episodes, and we told you that Season three would be dedicated to digging directly into listener questions, but this episode ended up being the very long answer to some in-person questions that we had run into recently.  In this episode we talk about how to start your day when arriving at a new venue, all the way through how to get through your load out. There are quite a few interesting tidbits on how to move through your daily checklist faster, more accurately and more efficiently

As we enter season three of this podcast, we've decided it makes sense to finally really dig directly into listener questions.  We also had realized that while we had touched on this in many other episodes, we didn't actually ever make an episode dedicated to one of the most important skills in live audio: Troubleshooting.  We knock on a few of the most common issues one may come across, and some of the most likely fixes!

Sticking to the "wall of sound" instruments we chat about strings and some of the various methods for getting them to sound cohesive, or stick out as solo instruments.  While this may not be the most common input an average live sound engineer may come across, the methods for achieving natural sounds with unnatural micing are somewhat easy to transfer to other similar instrument types.  We chat about how to best capture strings, and we dig into monitoring, equalization, dynamics processing, and more!

We gave up on the idea that we would cover multiple topics in this one episode, but in this extra-long episode we knock out one!  Choirs and background vocalists, why did we even think that this was similar to horns and strings? Because the goal is often a "wall of sound."  We chat about how to best capture groups of singers, and we dig into monitoring, equalization, dynamics processing, and more!

We really really did think that we would cover multiple topics in this one episode, but in this extra-long episode we barely covered one!  Not the most common input but brass instruments can be challenging to get right. We chat about how to best capture live various brass instruments, and we dig into equalization, dynamics processing, isolation, effects and a lot more.  

Since it's been ages since we've done an episode, in this extra-long episode we try to make up for lost time!  Continuing down the path of the channel by channel season, we spend a lot of time chatting about how to best capture live pianos, how to set up patches in pianos and synths, and we dig into equalization, dynamics processing, saturation, effects and a lot more.